The family is mentioned by Johann Jacob Eggen in his "Chronicles of Early Highland" (published in English translation in New Switzerland in Illinois, eds. Spahn & Spahn), in a passage that illustrates the difficulty of life as a pioneer, circa 1836:
Ulrich Zimmermann, Gillomen's son-in-law, had earned $25.00 at my place, and he wanted to buy land with it. However, it was not possible to buy less than forty acres, and this would cost $50.00, so he asked me to buy forty acres and sell him half of it. He selected a tract that later became the eastern half of Highland. The Köpflis got wind of this and made Zimmermann believe that this piece of land was no longer to be had, but that the land adjoining on the west was still free. This tract was then bought, without our knowing that a project of Mr. Joseph Suppiger's was being ruined thereby. The forty acres were divided; I received the eastern part, had an old log cabin moved on it, a forty-two foot well dug, and several hundred rails hauled to the site to make a fence. Zimmermann now moved on this small estate with his family, just as winter was setting in. He had not been there long when he complained that the prairie wolves gathered around the hut every night and that they already had devoured two of his sheep and several young pigs. He could not afford to keep a dog to drive off the wolves, he said. He had to be away from home all week long, and his wife and children were afraid to stay alone. He asked me to take over the entire forty acres, and I sold it at cost to Joseph Suppiger, who then built a house on it for a person with some private means, and this house on Troxler Street, now (1875) belonging to J. J. Spindler, became the first dwelling in the town of Highland.
Dogs were necessary, not only for keeping off wolves but also the stock, especially pigs, that roamed at will in the fall seeking to break into the fields when the prairie grass was tough and the corn was beginning to ripen. It was not unusual to find as many as a dozen dogs on a farm.
Thus a newcomer who lacked the means to construct a fence around his property to protect it against the depredations of the roaming stock, had a hard time of it, and often was driven to despair. Even if he had fences but had taken no precautions against the prairie fires that raged in the fall, the fences often burned. These were all conditions with which we had to contend for many years. Recent arrivals have no conception of what the first settlers had to go through.
By the census of 1840, three of the Zimmermann children survived. In 1850 the family lived in Gilead Precinct, Calhoun County, Illinois. By 1860, Magdalena and her daughter Anna were back in Highland; what became of the surviving sons has not been discovered. Anna apparently cared for her mother until the latter's death on 06 October 1874. Anna seems not to have ever married.
